Simon Carrington has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in music, performing
as singer, double bass player and conductor, first in the UK where he was born, and latterly in the
USA. From 2003 to 2009 he was professor of choral conducting at
Yale University
and director of the Yale Schola Cantorum,
a 24 voice chamber choir which
he has brought to national and now international prominence, attracting the interest of his successor, Masaaki Suzuki,
director of the Bach Collegium Japan.
During his Yale tenure he led the introduction of a new graduate voice degree for singers specializing in oratorio, early music and
chamber ensemble, and, with his faculty colleagues, he guided two Yale graduate students to their first prize wins in consecutive conducting
competitions at American Choral Directors Association National Conventions.
From 2001 until his Yale appointment,
he was director of choral activities at the
New England Conservatory, Boston, where he was selected by the students for the Krasner Teaching Excellence Award,
and from 1994 to 2001 he held a similar position at the
University of Kansas.
Prior to coming to the United States, he was a creative force for twenty-five years with the
internationally acclaimed British vocal ensemble
The King’s Singers,
which he co-founded at Cambridge University. He gave 3,000 performances at many of the
world’s most prestigious festivals and concert halls, made more than seventy recordings, and
appeared on countless television and radio programs including nine appearances on the Tonight Show
with the late Johnny Carson!
Carrington was a chorister at Christ Church
Cathedral, Oxford, attended The King’s School,
Canterbury, and then won a choral scholarship to
King’s College, Cambridge, where he sang in the chapel choir for 4 years,
and for a subsequent year at New College, Oxford.
In the early days of The King's Singers he had a lively career as a double bass player, first as
sub-principal of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and then as a freelance player in London.
He specialised in continuo playing, particularly for his Cambridge contemporary John Eliot
Gardiner, with whom he made a number of recordings, but he also played with all the major
symphony and chamber orchestras under such diverse maestri as Claudio Abbado, Daniel
Barenboim, Benjamin Britten, Pierre Boulez, Sir Colin Davis, Carlo Maria Guilini, Otto
Klemperer, Ricardo Muti, Georg Solti and George Szell. As a teacher of conductors himself
for 15 years he only wished he'd paid more attention!
Now a Yale professor emeritus he maintains an active schedule as a freelance conductor and choral clinician, leading workshops
and master classes round the world. He has conducted the Monteverdi Vespers in Barcelona,
the Fauré Requiem in Orchestra Hall, Chicago, Handel's Messiah in Dublin and Boston,
Rachmaninov Vespers in Victoria, Canada, and Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevski in Poland.
He is a regular guest conductor at the Monteverdi Choir Festival in Budapest and the
Tokyo Cantat in Japan and leads annual conducting courses at the
Chamber Choir Festival in
Sarteano (Italy), and the
Yale Summer Festival in Norfolk, Connecticut. In 2009 he has conducting engagements
in Canada, Korea, Japan, New Zealand and Europe as well as his customary round of performances in the US.
Languages: German & French
Puy Calvel
46240 Lamothe Cassel
France
Tel: + 33 5 56 36 81 25
simon.carrington@yale.edu
